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Ryan Molina
Ryan Molina is the Co-Creator of Battle Geek Plus along with Josh Christopher. He current helps host the main Battle Geek Plus show and plays a variety of characters such as Kung Kwon Todd, Jimmy Buckrider, and Totally Tubular Tim. Biography Ryan grew up in Pasadena, California as a child of the 80's who grew to love all geeky things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Nintendo. In high school, Ryan learned how to make websites and design graphics. In his senior year of high school in 1999 under the screenname "Castor Troy" (based of Nicolas Cage's character from the movie Face/Off), he created a Dragon Ball Z website called "Vegeta Insane" based on the character Vegeta during the height of Dragon Ball Z's popularity on Cartoon Network. Within a few months, Vegeta Insane became a household hit with over 6000-10,000 views per day. Due to bandwidth concerns, Ryan had to move Vegeta Insane off free servers like Geocities and Tripod and found hosting with the popular Dragon Ball Z website, planetnamek,com. During this time, Ryan was inspired to create AMVs (Anime Music Videos) after his friend Eric took clips that Ryan captured off the current Dragon Ball Z VHS tape releases at the time and set them to music. In May of 2000, Ryan turned "Vegeta Insane" into "Ginga GIRI GIRI" which now covered all of Dragon Ball instead of just only Vegeta. In 2002, Ryan had to shut down Ginga GIRI GIRI due to massive bandwidth problems and decided to shift focus on making Anime Music Videos. With the skills Ryan learned from making AMVs, he eventually landed several professional freelance editing gigs and interned at a huge film studio. Ryan decided to become a filmmaker after being inspired from his favorite director Kevin Smith (of Clerks fame). Around this time, Ryan became a big fan of the Angry Video Game Nerd and the Nostalgia Critic. Ryan has won various awards for his Anime Music Video work and decided to retire from AMVs in 2012 to focus full time on making films. Battle Geek Plus After Ryan's internship at the big film studio was over, he was thinking of making a webshow similar to shows like The Angry Video Game Nerd and the Nostalgia Critic, but couldn't think of any solid ideas. In the spring of 2011, his longtime friend Josh Christopher from the Daizenshuu EX Forums (Now Kanzenshuu) was moving from Indiana to California and presented Ryan with his show "Battle Geek Plus" which was a narrative show about Josh's geeky martial arts adventures. Ryan was impressed with the show and volunteered to work on it, but Josh decided to do a total reboot focusing more on video game related sketches and Ryan's expertise on film and editing. Ryan suggested that they take a similar approach of thatguywiththeglasses.com (TGWTG) and make a website with a listing of similar shows. They launched the original Battle Geek Plus website on October 1, 2011 with videos hosted on both YouTube and blip.tv. The original Battle Geek Plus cast was Ryan, Josh, their close friend Bill Rosser, and eventually expanded to Josh's girlfriend (now wife) Heather May, and other close friend Frank Codalata. Due to unforseen circumstances, the first Battle Geek Plus channel was lost and had to move to a new one in August of 2012. Blip TV also purged all of the Battle Geek Plus videos in September of 2014. Channel Awesome Talent Pickup 2014 In May of 2014, after watching Doug Walker's call for a Talent Pickup at the end of The Lorax review, Ryan informed the BGP crew that they should apply for the Talent Pickup. After waiting until the end of July 2014, Ryan got the good news that they have been accepted on the site and were scheduled to start on Nov 7, 2014. Ever since they've debuted on the site, Battle Geek Plus has made numerous appearances on the Nostalgia Critic and many other Channel Awesome shows. Original Characters Ryan is mostly known for being one of the four hosts on the main Battle Geek Plus show and also does several original characters. Kung Kwon Todd Ryan has always been a fan of the Capcom Street Fighter games and mostly a fan of Martin Lawrence's "Dragonfly Jones" character which inspired him to do an epic fail martial arts character. "When Josh and I first started Battle Geek Plus and even with my knowledge of film and editing, I was way too afraid to be on camera by myself. I really wanted to create this character and wouldn't be able to unless I finally became brave enough to get in front of a camera solo. Kung Kwon Todd was not only created as a tribute to Martin Lawrence's Dragonfly Jones character, but as a way for me to finally perform on my own." - ''Ryan on Kung Kwon Todd. Jimmy Buckrider Being a fan of the Tecmo Super Bowl and Madden games, Ryan got the inspiration for the character after buying props and costumes for Battle Geek Plus and eventually buying a silly looking foam football helmet out of the blue. The original name for the character was going to be "Jimmy Deerstomper" but Ryan decided on the less violent sounding "Jimmy Buckrider" instead. Ryan bases Jimmy's low-key and monotone performance based on monotone sounding football players in interviews. "''I always wanted to make a character that plays football in non-football related situations and his reactions to those situations. As a kid, I would always pretend I was playing football on the beach, in my house, and when I went to class. Yeah, I was a weirdo." - Ryan on Jimmy Buckrider. Totally Tubular Tim Ryan always wanted to make a show highlighting the silliness of bad games, trying to make them look good and after being inspired from Linkara's 90's Kid, he came up with the Totally Tubular Tim character. "I always loved watching reviews of bad games from shows like The Angry Video Game Nerd, but I always wanted to find some way to highlight these games as a delusional character who thinks these are good games. Linkara's 90's Kid was that kind of character who looked at bad comics in a hilarious positive light, so I based the Totally Tubular Tim character off him. I'm still blown away by the fact I was able to cameo Totally Tubular Tim in Atop The Fourth Wall, the very show that inspired him." - Ryan on Totally Tubular Tim. Battle Geek Plus Adventures Originally called the "Battle Geek Plus Main Series", BGP Adventures was originally the only show Ryan wanted to do at first. It was mostly inspired from shows like Mega64 and the Channel Awesome Anniversary Specials, but due to the complications of writing multiple characters and scenarios, Ryan had to come up with other shows to fill the gaps between BGP Adventures episodes. "I think every kid who grew up with video games has always pretended they were Mario, Link, Mega Man, etc going through a video game world and fighting bad guys. I always used to pretend I was going on adventures to save the princess and fight the evil bad guys whenever I just went to the park with my family. BGP Adventures is finally a way to make that come to life." - Ryan on BGP Adventures. Personal Influences Nicolas Cage Ryan's influences for his work and Battle Geek Plus come from a variety of inspirations. Ryan's favorite actor is Nicolas Cage, especially for his performance in Face/Off which led Ryan to use the "Castor Troy" screenname up until 2012. Ryan says despite Nicolas Cage's reputation, he still loves his over-the-top and batshit crazy performances. Ryan's favorite Nicolas Cage performance is Castor Troy from Face/Off and his favorite all time movie is "The Rock" which also starred Nicolas Cage. Kevin Smith Kevin Smith is Ryan's favorite director and was inspired to make his hobby of filmmaking his dream job due to Smith's positive words from his Q&A sessions about following your passions and that anyone can do it. Ryan's favorite Kevin Smith film is Clerks 2. Web Influences Mega64, The Angry Video Game Nerd, and The Nostalgia Critic were Ryan's inspirations for making web videos. He discovered Angry Video Game Nerd while randomly watching YouTube videos in his college dorm in 2006 and discovered The Nostalgia Critic from the 5 Second Movies and the feud with the Nerd in the spring of 2008. Ryan discovered Mega64 through their Resident Evil 4 video in 2006 and bases alot of Battle Geek Plus off their videos. Ryan's favorite Angry Video Game Nerd episode is The Power Glove, his favorite Nostalgia Critic is Mortal Kombat Annihilation, and his favorite Mega64 video is the Resident Evil 4 one. Ryan has worked with both the Angry Video Game Nerd and the Nostalgia Critic in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2014 review and with Mega64 in the Battle Geek Plus E3 videos. Favorite Games Ryan's 3 favorite games are Final Fantasy VI, Super Mario World, and Street Fighter 2, with Final Fantasy VI being the most favorite. He claims that Final Fantasy VI is what changed the way he saw gaming from being something fun to do to something emotionally engaging. Other Favorites Ryan's favorite TV show is the original 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles followed by both the 2003 and 2012 series. His favorite anime are Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, and Yu Yu Hakusho with Dragon Ball Z being the top favorite. His favorite comic book heroes are Batman and Spider-Man. Links Ryan's Twitter Ryan's Anime Music Video.org Page (under Castor Troy) Ginga GIRI GIRI Kai (Ryan's DBZ site) Category:Content Category:Blistered Thumbs Category:TGWTG